A ban on the faith-based workplace

By Washington Times (DC)November 12, 2013 12:25 pm

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Last week, the U.S. Senate matter-of-factly, with no serious vocal opposition except a last-ditch warning of the consequences by Sen. Dan Coats, Indiana Republican, voted 64 to 32 to expand government and repeal the Bible.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act doesn't say that directly, but its core meaning is that employers - and their employees - must accommodate every sexual expression under the sun or face federal prosecution and nuisance lawsuits by the American Civil Liberties Union.

House Speaker John A. Boehner said the bill would not reach the House floor. People who believe in the freedoms of speech, religion and assembly, not to mention what's left of property rights, had better hope he keeps his promise. This is about so much more than the threat of "frivolous lawsuits."

Even if you're not persuaded by moral arguments, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is a massive expansion of federal power and a gift to trial attorneys, who are among the largest donors to the Democratic Party. Ten Republicans joined 54 Democrats in the final vote. They're either spectacularly naive, or they think they're smarter than God. You can love and cherish friends and family who are homosexual without bringing a government jackboot down on everyone else.

Far from ensuring equality, the bill is a radical departure from civil rights laws, whose protected classes stem from immutable characteristics with no moral content, such as skin color, place of birth or sex. The exception is religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment.

What makes "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" different is that these categories are vague, not immutable, and the associated behaviors have moral implications. In fact, behavior defines the groups. Otherwise, unlike race or sex, no one would know.

By equating such behaviors with neutral, unchangeable characteristics such as ethnicity, the act says to religious employers: "You will abandon your faith-based morality and instead abet behavior that your faith and Scripture says is wrong and harmful."

It's a lot like the Obamacare mandate to religious health care institutions to provide abortions - or else.

If you want to know how laws like the Employment Non- Discrimination Act operate in real life, there are a growing number of cases.

In 2008, a judge in New Mexico affirmed a fine of $6,638 against a Christian couple in Albuquerque who run a photography business. Their crime? Declining to photograph a lesbian ceremony.

Earlier this year, a Gresham, Ore., Christian couple who ran a bakery were investigated for not baking a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. Harassed for months, they closed their business in September.

In California, businesses that decline to provide marital benefits to same-sex couples are denied state government contracts.

In Ohio, a black college administrator was fired in 2008 for writing an article on her own time that disagreed with the notion that race and sexual orientation are equivalent traits.

This is freedom?

Among the Republicans who voted for the bill were Sen. John McCain of Arizona and formerly conservative Pennsylvania Sen. Patrick J. Toomey. There is nothing conservative about giving the federal government and leftist pressure groups another enormous club with which to beat America's employers senseless.

Conservatives work to reduce government, not to expand its power. It's no coincidence that homosexual activist groups were among the most aggressive supporters of Obamacare. The act and Obamacare are vast, new liberal government mandates.

The nation's workplaces have already been subjected to de facto enforcement of quotas despite provisions prohibiting them. Employers are accused of "disparate impact" regardless of sincere efforts to hire more minorities or women.

Imagine "civil rights" lawyers under the Obama Justice Department invading workplaces to ensure that there are an acceptable number of men wearing dresses, along with homosexual-related hires, promotions and celebrations.

Advocates claim that it's about "simple fairness." It's not. The law will criminalize dissent against any initiative by newly empowered "sexual minorities." Don't feel like making your employees celebrate "gay pride day" or attend "diversity" brainwashing? Welcome to court. Hope you can afford it.

The biggest mistake that liberty defenders could make is to buy into the "religious exemption" inserted by Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican. It's a fig leaf, and a thin one at that.

Once the law is on the books, a liberal federal judge will void the exemption.

For a lesson in abusing federal law, consider that the Internal Revenue Service has throttled political speech in churches since the 1950s. Texas Democratic Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson inserted a provision in the tax code threatening the nonprofit status of religious institutions if leaders endorse candidates from the pulpit. Johnson did so to shut up overly critical preachers.

Churches in America are untaxed not because they do what Caesar tells them, but because, as Jesus says in John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world." The Johnson gag order is unconstitutional, which is why the IRS has not dared to bring a case. Conservative churches, however, have been silenced, while many liberal churches ignore the law. They know that hustlers such as Al Sharpton will run to the media if the IRS gets too frisky.

Add this law to this mix, and we're well on the way to a day when the feds are editing sermons and punishing churches that don't have priestesses performing same-sex ceremonies.

Proponents insist that it will never come to that, but don't believe them. Liberal groups are working to remove the Catholic Church's tax exemption over its opposition to abortion, and they ran the church out of the adoption business in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Imagine what they will do nationally if President Obama gets to sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

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Robert Knight is senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times.

God is systematically being removed from America, and being forced to be exalted only in our Churches and in our homes, and the root of the problem comes from the Muslim in the Whitehouse.
We dare not speak our Savior Jesus, or his father Gods name, nor Pray in public, under penalty of arrest, and or being labeled a terrorist. Striking down our Religious rights, due to us by the Constitution. Even while thousands of Muslims can block off a normally busy street in New York, to pray to Allah, and it is considered their Religious right.
Nobama celebrates openly any Muslim event, or Observance even in the Whitehouse, yet openly denies any Christian Observance or Holiday.
Freedom of Religion?, only those allowed by Nobama. Freedom of Speech?, only that allowed by Nobama.
America as we once knew it, has taken on a sinister glow, and is being fundamentally transformed, and, no longer a Christian Nation, just as was spoken by Nobama from the beginning.
I believe these are the only promises he has kept, and like all of his other agendas, is more to it’s transformation into destruction, and taken into 3rd world status, to achieve his Socialist, Marxist, Communistic goals for it.

We are truly headed into the final days and judgment, Prophesied over 2,000 years ago. When Jesus comes through the clouds, it is he, and the Father who will be running the show, and I would not want to be any of those who have opposed either of them. Their Judgment will be complete, and permanent. The gates of both Heaven and Hell will be opened, to receive their just deservers.

Obama is AN anti-Christ. A type and shadow of THE anti-Christ to come. A savior for the pagan masses. All this STINKS but God is still on the throne. The end times will not be pleasant. I truly believe we are very close.
“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus”.

Psalm 2 addresses this well. I particularly like vs. 4.

(New International Version)

1 Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”
10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;
be warned, you rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear
and celebrate his rule with trembling.
12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry
and your way will lead to your destruction,
for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

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Comment by Warpfield November 12, 2013 @ 3:36 pm

In this country there are specific laws regarding sexual harassment and the like. In short, any common decent person doesn’t speak about their sex life in public. It is a private matter, always has been, always will be.

I never could understand why these gay folks have the unnerving desire to be so damned vocal and flamboyant about their sexual orientation. So you’re gay. Who the f*** cares?

You just don’t understand the gay mind do you? That’s OK, a lot of people don’t, but it is very simply really. They have been put down and outlawed for so long that when they finally get some freedoms, they have to put it in your face to get even with all those years they were held down. They are simply laughing at you now and daring you to do something about it. They know that anything you say to them about it being wrong and they can take you to court and win. That’s the same reason they go after all these business places that are Christian and knowing they will not serve them. They go anyway so they can make an example out of them. They love putting places like this out of business and live for the day when they can stick it to another one. The last thing they believe in is live and let live…………

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Comment by vietnamvet November 12, 2013 @ 7:01 pm

mred,
I’m sure you know about the pendulum, and how it swings both ways.
The day will come when the table will be turned, and the sexual deviants will long for the security, and the anonymity, of their ‘closets’.

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Comment by vietnamvet November 12, 2013 @ 5:38 pm

64 members of the Democratically controlled U.S. Senate voted to enact affirmative action for sexual deviants.
There is a lot of ‘trash’ in Washington that needs to be taken out.

Churches can only blame themselves for becoming irrelevant as they spent time worrying about a Utopian world and failed to inspire and concentrate on creating responsible individuals, families and community. Where was the criticism of government policies that destroyed inner city families? Where was the reality of allowing drugs to undermine morality? Where was the message that without a work ethic and employable skills, there was no job.

Christians, along with conservative heterosexual white males and also orthodox Jews to some degree, are becoming or have become the “Jews” of America to america’s nationalist socialist party- the demorepublicans- and particularly the feminazis (mostly white females). Lesbians (in particular) and gays, instead of being the victims, as in Hitler’s Germany (along with the Jews, of course) have become the persecutors, and this is clear. It was the “women’s” movement/lesbian/literally evil witches movement that has flipped the socioligical-moral atmosphere of this country on its’ head, everybody knows that in their hearts who is more than 40 years or so old, and it is really irreversible, it appears, at this point. Very sad, it used to be that women were the KEEPERS of the family and Christian values (the women’s temperance movement is one example and there are many many others) and now they are the rejectors of family and the destroyers. People are letting the schools, FILLED with these women, raise their kids. Sorry, I call them as I see them, and that’s definitely what I see.

This is just more YPICAL LIBERAL IGNORANCE. It also proves just how left McCain has gone since he said that people wanted him to run for President in a story that was put out in the last few days. Well I can tell him he is delusional if he thinks that. Americans want a leader not some wishy washy twit who votes and goes however the wind blows as long as it as far to the left as one can get. McCain is a RINO of the worst kind.

I’m not sure delusional goes far enough Mr. Dawg. There must be another psychological term for an abnormal mental condition such as his. If “Droopy Dog” Senator J. McCain had a “vision” that the people are wanting him to run for President (yet again), how does he explain that he has been rejected twice? Once by President Bush and once by the man with the golden tongue. He must be chewing peyote buttons. In the interests of tuthiness, I must admit I voted for him against you know who.

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Comment by braines57 November 13, 2013 @ 3:31 pm

2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 – King James Version (KJV)

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.